Corps HQ and micromanaging armies

[foxbal]

1) For those that still enjoy micromanaging the ground forces, how do you feel in East Front with Germany now in HoI3 and how did you feel it when you played HoI3?

2) I miss the corps "label" organization, but I could live without the Corps HQ. It may help some automatic or manual OOB label that assigns new division to a corps but without needing to "carry" out with you the HQ corps in a separate counters when the front line advances or retreat...would it be difficult?

3) I also wonder if there is a way to make the color front lines thinner because the fighting seems always on pink or blue terrain and not natural ground.

 

[spartansociety]

In SP the only time I have really bothered to micro my units was in the Guttermerung scenario. Otherwise, I just adjust units not doing well with the battle planner. Honestly, it was so unwieldy in 3 I did a similar thing (yes, I am bad at 3). If you have not tried that mod, it is well worth a go.

 

[sionprawn]

I'm a micro man.

I still micro my troops most of the time in HOI4, but using Fronts has made things a lot easier than HOI3. I only really use them to get the troops roughly where I want them, prior to an attack (and to get the planning bonus). In HOI3 I wouldn't use them at all, because with Theaters you'd get troops moving away from the front to go and guard something like a port, or half your troops would withdraw to attack 1 Partisan div that popped up somewhere.

As to extra layers of command, I wasn't a great fan of all the layers in HOI3 due to the extra management required to move them, but I would like to see an extra layer now, because they would move automatically with the Front now that I do use fronts (a bit).

Would love front lines to be a lot thinner, they hide things like rivers which drives me bonkers.

 

[foxbal]

I'm micro too. I can micro with pause mode quite often. I admit it is sometimes nice to see the 3D planes around but i'm not sure if the clarity of the operations development is achieved with current HoI4 version if you have the benchmark of HoI3.

Perphaps is that I'm not used yet to the smaller counters of HoI3 and it was easier for me to use HoI3 counters?

or the colorful front lines confuse the map terrain and make it less a wargame and more arcade game? I felt more immersed in hoI3 but i hope this is temporally and Hoi4 shows all its strength in future upgrades.

 

[Praetori]

I miss a OOB sometimes, not necessarily the HOI3 one but some more granular way to organize the divisions would be welcome.
An army of some 20 divisions with different battle-plans for chunks of divisions (3-4 "corps") soon turns into blob madness as the plan unfolds. If the zoom-level grouping was to battle-plan front and then army I would be happier as clicking a grouped "stack" currently selects divisions from different armies which doesn't help at all.

A hierarchical system doesn't need to be on-map with HQs like in HOI3. It works with the "armies" in HOI4 which acts as groups with placeholders for Generals, I just wish it was more tiered (select a corps, ctrl-click a front arrow) and that the icon grouping was tied to it.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

I find it a real pain to micro entire armies unless you tryhard 200% with 1944 Germany, but its really fun to micro some panzer divisions as volunteers in China and Spain encircling and cutting stuff off.

 

[axyarthur]

I find that I only use the battle planner for the planning bonus. I would make a plan, let it tick up to get full planning bonus, then delete it and move troops manually, keeping the planning bonus. I hate it when battle plan AI would move troops to inappropriate locations in the middle of important maneuvers.

I do miss making OOB in HOI3, though. I used to like organizing my army better than fighting the war itself, lol

 

[sionprawn]

I do miss making OOB in HOI3, though. I used to like organizing my army better than fighting the war itself, lol

You need a psychiatrist

 

[ltccone]

You need a psychiatrist

I liked the OOB too, but the HQ units on the map infuriated me. Nothing beats a panzer division getting an attack delay for fighting a 25 man HQ...

 

[Constans]

I also like the move away from the fairly tedious OOB of HOI3, but like many others do miss having some level of OOB and the immersion it provided.

The issue is adding any sort of WW2 authentic OOB is impossible without going back to the complexity of the HOI3 setup. So, any further expanding of the OOB would be on an ahistorical basis (though the current General/Field Marshal setup is already ahistorical).

I think a potential compromise would be to break the system into a 3-tiered OOB setup: with Army HQ divisions-Army Groups-Theatre Field Marshal.

How this would work would at level 1 you designate certain divisions to be the "Army HQ" divisions. For all intents and purposes they act as normal divisions, but they also act as an HQ division ala HOI3 giving bonuses to divisions within range, with a limit of 12 or so divisions that can be attached to them. Then you have the Army Group above that, with up to 3 armies under them. And then the Theater, with an unlimited number of army groups under that.

This would up the immersion, and heck, if incorporated into the battleplanner AI might even help the AI (shuffle units from same army/army group rather than across theaters to fix holes)....

 

[Uberbrandon]

OOBs come up every couple of months. The main thing holding me back from playing more right now. The devs very vaguely mentioned bringing them back at the army and/or corps level would be something they would like, but that was last fall. Seems lower on their priority list atm

 

[YourMateGouldie]

Way I envision it is just adding layers to the current theatre system.

So just insert corps/army (and/or) under Theatre respectively.

So divisions can be attached to corps, corps to armies and armies to theatres.

Corps can have individual battle plans drawn. Then army can also have battle plans drawn but it acts as an overall battle plan for the individual corps under the army to work towards. Same with the armies under theatre. An overall battle plan can be drawn for the army. So. Players can be as in depth as they want in drawing battle plans down to the corps level or just draw battle plans at the army or theatre level.

Benefits of this type of system? You can allocate individual taskings to corps, armies and divisions which allows for more complex manouvers with overall less micro management.

So, for instance you could task a corp with capturing a particular city. Then once that capture is complete, it automatically changes over to assisting in the Army battle plan and the other corps that haven't competed its battle plan. Once the army accomplishes its task it can then roll into the overall theatre plan until the army and corps are assigned new battle plans.

Essentially it gives the flexibility for the player to have more or less micro managing but overall improvement to complexities of ability to plan at all levels and perform more complex manouvres I beleive.

Of course I don't know how hard this would be to implement.

 

[jamesd]

I liked the HOI3 OOB and used the HQ units to hold corps & army troops which I could then commit to decisive points. I never had any problems keeping units within command ranges.

In HOI4 I would like to see the ability to assign field marshals to theatres/army groups and bring in Lt Generals as corps commanders, where those generals later went on to command army or higher level commands. Those Lt Gens would still sit directly under a theatre/army group, their separation from an army commander representing their ability to act independently in contrast to other corps commanders whose careers topped out at that level. The numbers of divisions per general should be reduced in such a system to maybe something like 4-6 for a LtG & 12-18 for a Gen, and Field Marshals should have a limit on the number of subordinates they can effectively manage (2 + skill level?). I'd also like to see a return to historical dates of availability, for example Rommel should only become available as a corps commander in 1940, and not be available as an army commander in 1936. It would only work with a vast improvement to battle plans. The way they work at the moment with them sprawling over the entire front so quickly combined with even more command groups and separate plans would be madness.

 

[HaruhiFollower]

OOBs come up every couple of months. The main thing holding me back from playing more right now. The devs very vaguely mentioned bringing them back at the army and/or corps level would be something they would like, but that was last fall. Seems lower on their priority list atm

A land warfare overhaul was listed as coming in the third "expansion" (what is the current nomenclature for non-music DLCs?), after air war improvements. As planning for that DLC is probably underway now is the time to start more threads about it, plus more when they get back from vacations to work on the DLC.

I liked the HOI3 OOB and used the HQ units to hold corps & army troops which I could then commit to decisive points. I never had any problems keeping units within command ranges.

In HOI4 I would like to see the ability to assign field marshals to theatres/army groups and bring in Lt Generals as corps commanders, where those generals later went on to command army or higher level commands. Those Lt Gens would still sit directly under a theatre/army group, their separation from an army commander representing their ability to act independently in contrast to other corps commanders whose careers topped out at that level. The numbers of divisions per general should be reduced in such a system to maybe something like 4-6 for a LtG & 12-18 for a Gen, and Field Marshals should have a limit on the number of subordinates they can effectively manage (2 + skill level?). I'd also like to see a return to historical dates of availability, for example Rommel should only become available as a corps commander in 1940, and not be available as an army commander in 1936. It would only work with a vast improvement to battle plans. The way they work at the moment with them sprawling over the entire front so quickly combined with even more command groups and separate plans would be madness.

I almost wholeheartedly agree with these ideas with the caveat that it would be better for the LtGs to be distinguished commanders on the corps level during WW2 - many of them went on to become army/army group commanders, but there is no shortage of those. In case of Germany Rommel and Guderian would be good examples of generals with well documented skill during division and/or corps scale engagements (which are roughly similar as they include mixing of different battalions and frontline command and intelligence), while whether they were in any way exceptional as commanders of larger units is contentious. Though I guess with a promotion button they could put all generals that were "junior" at the start of the war at the LtG level...

Having an extra level of generals would also solve the "optimality" problem - currently a general commanding two "panzer corps" (or airborne, marines...) in two different theatres advances in skill and traits faster then two separate generals, while the latter solution is better for both gameplay and flavour.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Any grouping that is fixed or sticky can be a partial substitute for corps or battlegroups. No need for a corps HQ at all. E.g., .

(1) assigning some of the troops of an army tto an appropriately sized battleplan of itheir own - front line, e.g., offensive line, fallback.
Modfy or replace the plans for each group. This is of course subject to the same problems as BGs generally if you don't issue correct orders in the correct way in order to keep them separate.

(2) Naming your troops so the ones you want together are listed together in the Army Overview and can more easily be watched and selected together there. I have done that with the Romanian Army - not incredibly large, and with a predetermined structure that lets me regroup them when desired.

(3) use Army level for corps functions - takes more officers and dilutes command experience gains.

The ease of getting BPs and armies mixed up popped up again just recently. I have posted asking for the abilty to lock armies against accidental transfers and the same could apply to creating groups of divs that stay together.

Any other ideas?
Cheers

 

[fabius]

I like the idea of Armies having support battalions that auto assign to it's subordinate divisions battles. Similar to War in the East.

 

[Sir Garnet]

I like the idea of Armies having support battalions that auto assign to it's subordinate divisions battles. Similar to War in the East.

A full range of support companies already exists. Small-width brigade-size or smaller "divisions" already exist and they can possibly reinforce into the front line where space permits and larger divisions could not. Can make and use them now.

What would be interesting as a concept would be to have detachments which operate only to swap in and out of the battle line when space is open or vacated, but pull back outy to allow reinforcements to join the line, operating as a fire brigade of sorts. for the duration of a combat. But would they fight on their own or add on to units in the fight, boosting their stats? Too powerful?

 

[scroggin]

OOBs come up every couple of months. The main thing holding me back from playing more right now. The devs very vaguely mentioned bringing them back at the army and/or corps level would be something they would like, but that was last fall. Seems lower on their priority list atm

I would love to have an OOB as long as its off-map. The devs are quite right to concentrate on AI improvements and game ballance at the moment though.

 

[fabius]

A full range of support companies already exists. Small-width brigade-size or smaller "divisions" already exist and they can possibly reinforce into the front line where space permits and larger divisions could not. Can make and use them now.

What would be interesting as a concept would be to have detachments which operate only to swap in and out of the battle line when space is open or vacated, but pull back outy to allow reinforcements to join the line, operating as a fire brigade of sorts. for the duration of a combat. But would they fight on their own or add on to units in the fight, boosting their stats? Too powerful?

It's not the same thing. Arty is plain vanilla; usually several of the same in the divs.
Heavy arty, rockets, specialised assault engineers; AA, and go some way to making Armies an d theatres something more.

 

[Praetori]

What would be interesting as a concept would be to have detachments which operate only to swap in and out of the battle line when space is open or vacated, but pull back outy to allow reinforcements to join the line, operating as a fire brigade of sorts. for the duration of a combat. But would they fight on their own or add on to units in the fight, boosting their stats? Too powerful?

Those could be handled off-map as assigned to an army/corps assigned to a battleplan and with deployment time, like aircraft (so you wouldn't be able to swap them in and out of battles in far-away places). Attachments is something that I really miss from HOI2. Great feature that didn't work out well in HOI3 even though you could attach and detach individual regiments (and the AI couldn't handle it at all).